Weather Forecast

Climate changes happened before man

By Chris Vin on May 6, 2009 at 1:02 p.m.

Lets examine the "the worlds on fire" groups' argument that man is causing catastrophic climate change. That's what it is now since the last few years have been cooler. What's their evidence? The temperature has risen and that can only be because of human activities, which is causing terrible storms the likes of which nobody has ever seen. How narcissistic or egocentric must some people be? Follow me as I try and think critically for a moment.

Weather is micro. Climate is macro. See the difference? Weather is the day-to-day, week-to-week, season-to-season, century-to-century stuff we have observed and recorded for, say, a thousand years. That's a pretty long time. The Earth, on the other hand, is, give or take, four and a half billion years old. There are one thousand thousands in a million and a thousand millions in one billion...get the point?

Now, lets assume (I know the "u" and "me" thing) since the time we started taking the earth's temperature, all things have stayed the same. Galileo's balls of liquid floating up and down in the water filled tube measure the same 50 degrees that my cool wireless digital thermometer hanging on my oak tree measure. We don't have to go back that far, what about the mercury thermometers we had in high school o'those many years ago? Do you think they measure the same 50 degrees? Now lets examine the location where those temps were taken. I would argue that the paving of the planet has caused more warming than a little CO2 but I don't want to add fuel to the fire of those that can't seem to reason. Now they want us to believe that the Earth has warmed in the tenths of a degree? A .4 of a degree? Measured with what?

What about the melting ice, Chris? Okay, what about it? Remember where we live? Had it not been for global warming we'd be under a mile or more of ice. What caused that? Most likely the sun, that thing that drives our climate now. Did you know that the rate of polar cap shrinkage on Mars mirrors ours here on Earth? And all without SUVs or George Bush. Oh yea, Mars' ice caps are coming back too.

Try this one on. Livestock in the U.S. puts out 10 times the amount of global warming causing gasses than all the transportation (auto, rail, air and shipping) worldwide. So, even if we all started hitchin' the teams back to the wagon, we'd still be killing the planet. Stop it! I hear some of you trying to think critically again. But Chris, what about the 65 million bison that roamed this land? Did they cause global warming? Of course not and neither are we.

Weather changes. Climate changes. We adapt. Just like those first people here wiping out the mammoth. Should we pollute? Of course not. Should we use a couple of warm winters to sell an expensive, needless program that benefits Al Gore's new carbon credits company? All I'm saying is think critically. Through all the epochs of warming and cooling and warming again only to cool again right up to where we are now...this time, it's our fault? Think folks.